Video 8:17
Alice and Rosemary

Alice Giles is one of the world's leading harpists. Her mother, Rosemary Madigan, is a renowned sculptor. Along with their families, they live and work together on an idyllic rural property.

Transcript

CHRIS KIMBALL, PRESENTER: There seems to be something in the air out here that brings and keeps families together.

Alice Giles is a world famous harpist and her husband, a renowned Israeli pianist.

They've settled in a property here in Yass. Along with Alice's mum who is leading sculptor Rosemary Madigan.

ALICE GILES, HARPIST: Everyone in my family played music at home. And we had a very old grand piano and my favourite thing was to reach inside and strum the strings.

Thinking back to those early beginnings, it was just the sound of strings, there's also something very tactile about touching the strings. The harp is a very immediate instrument. So however you touch it and however you hold yourself, whatever you do with your body comes out as a particular kind of colour of sound.

When I was studying in the States, I went into one of the international competitions in the world which was the Israel international harp contest and I won that.

And that was in 1982.

I went back later and that's where I met my husband, who was a pianist. And then we decided to together to Germany because it was kind of really at that point the hub of a very lively musical life for young performers like us.

It was a great time but then our first daughter was born and we decided to move back to Australia.

I never thought I would be able to have this kind of varied musical life and live in the country and do my teaching, which I love, and I teach two days at the ANU School of music.

Then I go overseas about twice a year.

Do you want to show me what you're going to take to the gallery yes?

ROSEMARY MADIGAN, SCULPTOR: Yes. Come in Alice I will show you what we've decided to send.

I thought I'd like to be a sculptor, I didn't know much about it.

But it's funny how those things happen.

I like carving and more than modelling.

I think I like to have something there and deal with it.

Cut it away.

It does suggest to you the shape, you know, if it's a certain shape. It can't be this or that, it has to be that.

In the early days, the fashion was direct carving so you didn't make a model, you didn't have a little sketch and blow it up because that lost the feeling, the spontaneity of it.

That's why commissions are hard for me because I can't decide that it's going to be that because the stone or the wood it leads me somewhere else. So it's a voyage of discovery all the time.

REPORTER: Your father was the geologist and explorer Cecil Madigan. Tell me a bit about him.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: Actually you're sitting in a chair that was chair in his study where he wrote a couple of books.

REPORTER: Great an illustrious chair!

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: So I was brought up with Hurley pictures of icebergs in the house and things like that.

A penguin my father had a penguin in the study and a seal skin mat I suppose it was from down there but he did have a polar bear, which was not correct.

But that was good for children because that was on the floor and it had a big head and you could put your book and lie and read these books.

He only went down to the Antarctic with Mawson. He was 22.

And they had an awful time and, at the end, they all went down on sledging journeys and he, the diary from one of the sledging journeys he kept falling in crevasses.

ALICE GILES: There was always this hero in my imagination because I never met him and as an explorer and a very strong personality.

The ANU supported an application I made to the Australian Antarctic Division for a fellowship to travel to Antarctica because there have been composers who have travelled to Antarctica but not so much performers.

So there's always been a fascination for me with kind of making a connection somehow and this will enable me to come some way to find out what he experienced there and get closer to it.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: I've been doing a lot of collage because it's been such rotten weather I haven't been able to carve outside. And I am getting older and, you know, it's more physical.

But I've got such a lot of stone and timber and I'm thinking I must get on to this, you know, time is running out.

Looking back, some things are not much good and some things are reasonable and every now and then you do something you're really happy with.

So, here's the nearly completed picture of your little daughter.

ALICE GILES: Terrific.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: And she's very proud of having a little spot here.

ALICE GILES: One day we saw a little private ad saying stone cottages and 45 acres of land and we came out here and saw these stone cottages that no one had been living in for 50 years; no floor boards, no ceiling, everything falling down.

But we fell in love with the place.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: She built this place, her place down the hill, it's a big block with a creek running through.

And so she and I one afternoon we were sitting on the hill here quietly and she said, 'I think I could live here.' And I said, 'I think I could too.'

So we did.

What colour is it?

ALICE GILES: One of those.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: Darkish. So it's about here isn't it?

ALICE GILES: Yep on the inside.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: So here's the little golden patch.

And I'll make that later so it won't stand out too much.

ALICE GILES: It's lovely actually because it was just the two of us for quite a few years in Sydney when I was a teenager.

So we're very close and then I went off and I was independent for 16 years or more.

And it was so nice to come back and be both so happy together here in this environment.

ROSEMARY MADIGAN: I will tell you what I think about Yass, you come to Yass and you find these fascinating people, with lovely artistic traits and they're all sort of not pushing themselves forward.

Clever and artistic and musical and it's amazing.

CHRIS KIMBALL: And you can see and hear the work of those artists this weekend. For all the details, visit classicyass.com.au